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THE NEW REPUBLIC, DEC. 7, 1963
BY JEAN DANIEL

Havana, Nov. 22, 1963

It was about 1:30 in the afternoon, Cuban time. We were having lunch in the living room of the modest summer residence which Fidel Castro owns on magnificent Veradero Beach, 120 kilometers from Havana. The telephone rang, a secretary in guerrilla garb announced that Mr. Dorticos, President of the Cuban Republic, had an urgent communication for the Prime Minister. Fidel picked up the phone and I heard him say: “Cómo? Un atentado?” (“What’s that? An attempted assassination?”) He turned to us to say that Kennedy had just been struck down in Dallas. Then he went back to the telephone and exclaimed in a loud voice, “Herido? Muy gravemente?” (“Wounded? Very seriously?”)

He came back, sat down, and repeated three times the words: “Es una mala noticia.” (“This is bad news.”) He remained silent a moment, awaiting another call with further news. He remarked while we waited that there was an alarmingly sizable lunatic fringe in American society and that this deed could equally well have been the work of a madman or a terrorist. Perhaps a Vietnamese? Or a member of the Ku Klux Klan? The second call came through: The President of the United States was still alive. There was hope of saving him. Fidel Castro’s immediate reaction was: “If they can, he is already reelected.” He pronounced these words with satisfaction.

Now it was nearly two o’clock and we got up from the table and settled ourselves in front of a radio to get the NBC network in Miami. As the news came in, his physician, René Vallejo, would translate it for Fidel: Kennedy wounded in the head; pursuit of the assassin; murder of a policeman; finally the fatal announcement—President Kennedy is dead. Then Fidel stood up and said to me: “Everything is changed. Everything is going to change .  .  .. All will have to be rethought. I’ll tell you one thing: at least Kennedy was an enemy to whom we had become accustomed. This is a serious matter; an extremely serious matter.”

After the quarter hour of silence observed by all the American radio stations, we once more tuned in on Miami; the silence had only been broken by a re-broadcasting of the American national anthem. Strange indeed was the impression made on hearing this hymn ring out in the house of Fidel Castro in the midst of a circle of worried faces. “Now,” Fidel said, “they will have to find the assassin quickly, but very quickly, otherwise, you watch and see, they will try to put the blame on us for this thing.”